After losing its supercomputing crown last year to IBM's Blue Gene/L, Japan is now regrouping to capture the coveted title. The country is making plans to build a supercomputer 30 times faster than Big Blue's speediest.
Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) hopes to assemble a supercomputer by spring 2011 through a partnership with NEC, Hitachi, and several Japanese universities. This supercomputer, if all goes as planned, will perform three quadrillion calculations per second, or three petaflops. The Ministry said that it plans to match or exceed the predicted supercomputing benchmarks in the United States.
“While supercomputing is characterized by Linpack numbers and system specifications, it is also an area of national prestige since many of these systems are used in research and academia,” said Stacey Quandt, senior business analyst and open source practice leader at Robert Francis Group.
“Also, leading Japanese IT vendors have a stake in maintaining a competitive edge with their competitors. It is logical that Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology plans to work with NEC, Hitachi and Japanese universities to create a more powerful supercomputer,” she continued.
The speeds Japan strives for would trump current supercomputing records, like IBM's 70.72 trillion calculations per second on Blue Gene/L, the world's fastest computer built for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Agency. Japan's current fastest, the Earth Simulator, runs nearly 36 trillion calculations per second.
The proposed system would improve biotechnology and nanotechnoloy research endeavors, including simulations on how drugs run through the human body and affect specific organs. In addition, weather forecasts will increase in accuracy.
The plans will begin with a three-year research period, followed by several years of building and assembly. NEC will help to research optical interconnect technologies, and Hitachi will research circuit and transistor design. The University of Tokyo and Kyushu University will also be involved in the system's development.
Neither a full list of participants or a budget plan is finalized yet.